My son was four when we were living on Ft. Campbell base housing. The playground was behind our house so I'd fill his little canteen with water, give him some chewy fruit snacks and send him out for the afternoon so I could study/play Minesweeper on the computer. There were huge concrete pipes - probably leftover bunkers from WWII or something - and the kids played on them, hiding inside or trying to knock one another off. One evening he came running in the house screaming, tears running down his dirt-streaked face. He had fallen off the pipe and hurt his arm, so I made him dinner, gave him a bath, and tucked him into bed.
His dad came home later and checked on him as he was sleeping. He asked me why I didn't take him to the emergency room - his arm was still discolored - what kind of idiot was I? (how many different types are there, and is it possible to fall under multiple categories?). A few hours later, they returned from the hospital with my son's full arm cast. I DID feel horrible. And I had been a medic? Thank goodness I never saw combat: "Oh, that's just a sucking chest wound - get back out there!"
Oddly, this "suck it up" mentality doesn't extend to my kittens. Crackhead's (whose real name is Kennedy) fur fell out this week, and the other three's whiskers broke. I researched it on the internet and came to the conclusion that they had a rare and contagious fungus from the Amazon. I bundled up the kittens in the cat carrier, and off to the vet we went.
He checked for fungus, parasites, leukemia, aids, etc. and gave them a clean bill of health. He said they were very healthy, well-socialized and the fur must have fallen out from the stress of being abandoned or switching to solid food, since he could find no other medical explanation.
Combined total weight of my four kittens: 5 pounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment